AMD waves goodbye to DirectX 12

a staff writer, 9th April 2013

AMD has surprised the tech press by saying that it did not believe that there would ever be a DirectX 12.

AMD's vice president of global channel sales, Roy Taylor, stated during an interview with German magazine Heise.de that AMD did not think it will see a DirectX 12 API. That includes seeing a DirectX 12 with Windows 8, or Windows Blue. We reported on his views about APU futures, here.

He said that the days where the industry has refreshed DirectX continuously and new graphics cards needed more processors and more RAM were over.

Taylor was chatting about next-generation GPUs and technologies that they can be built around. He said that while they would normally build them around new DirectX versions to help the next-generation GPU architectures, this was not possible any more.

This is because there will not be a DirectX 12, which means AMD's next-gen GPUs will integrate other technologies.

He failed to mention what he thought these "other technologies" were.

The lack of faith that Taylor has in DirectX might have come from a memo which was leaked by Microsoft in January this year which claimed that it had had enough of the technology.

An email was sent to its XNA and DirectX MVPs notifying them that as of April 1, 2014 "XNA/DirectX will be fully retired from the MVP Award Programme".

The email said that DirectX was no longer evolving as a technology and further "value and engagement" cannot be offered to the MVP community.

It said that as result, effective April 1, 2014 XNA/DirectX will be fully retired from the MVP Award Programme.

This caught the industry on the hop as Direct X was baked into a lot of Microsoft software. The email was immediately denied by Microsoft. It issued a statement saying that DirectX was an important and evolving technology for Microsoft."

The spokesperson added that "Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for all of our platforms, including Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone. DirectX is evolving and will continue to evolve. Vole had no intention of stopping innovation with DirectX".

Microsoft claimed it had people across multiple divisions working on DirectX technologies and was innovating and evolving DirectX.

However it looks like AMD does not believe that and is looking elsewhere.

What Taylor thinks the industry needs are more games like Crysis or Bioshock Infinite 3, to encourage the industry to keep users hooked.

The PC gaming industry is undergoing a renaissance at the moment and Taylor said that AMD would continue to bundle chips with games.